Queenstown pilot Antony Sproull is about to set off on what he sees as the adventure of a lifetime.
The 29-year-old left the resort yesterday bound for a 20,000km flight home, ferrying a $2 million Cessna Caravan home for his father, Air Milford owner Hank Sproull.
The pair flew to Greece in October to collect the 14-seater aircraft, which will bring the Air Milford fleet to four, but were forced to return to New Zealand without it.
Yesterday Antony, Air Milford's operations manager, began the journey to Athens to collect the plane, which he will fly during the 60-hour journey home with two experienced Australian ferry pilots, Jim Hazelton (84) and Richard Purdy, at his side.
Mr Hazelton will direct the flight paths through the epic journey.
''Jim has the knowledge and contacts to lead us through the safest flying routes,'' Antony said.
The trio will fly home via the Greek Islands and Egypt, spending New Year's Eve on the Nile.
They will then fly across the Red Sea via Saudi Arabia to Southern Oman, the Maldives and Cocos (Keeling) Islands in the Indian Ocean.
From there they will fly to Broome, Western Australia, on to Alice Springs and land in Queenstown in mid-January.
Their journey will be live tracked through the Air Milford website.
The ''near new'' 675hp 208 Caravan has 300 hours on the clock and comes with state-of-the-art cockpit technology - the first of its kind to be operated between Queenstown and Milford Sound.
The plane's Garmin G1000 GPS instrument technology meant Air Milford had the potential to operate commercially into Milford on instrument flight rules (IFR), enabling flights to continue in bad weather.
Antony Sproull said the technology was known as ''the glass cockpit''.
''It's basically three iPads across your cockpit and that's your instrumentation.
''You've got three flat screen iPads handling your controls.
''This GPS technology is very new and a huge advancement. On average, we can only fly into Milford 250 days a year because of bad weather.
''This might push that out to potentially 300, so it's a huge economic advantage for Milford and Queenstown.''
Hank Sproull is IFR rated.
